Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=480m72yjZv8
Video Transcript
Speaker Matthew Danes
You’re in the room of every year of our degree. And one of the key things that we like to focus on at Coventry is the progression into the world of work. And this is something that I personally, and I know Chris is passionate about, is the entrepreneurial, because I have often a little saying that, how can you get rich if you’re working for someone else? If they can afford to pay you, how much are they getting paid? And so this is why we like this entrepreneurial edge as well, which is why I don’t think it’s why we don’t just do it to the final years because I think if you want to be an entrepreneur and I think… I’ll lay you into a background, Chris and I was at university together and Chris was always quite entrepreneurial.
Speaker Matthew Danes
So even though some of the guys here are first years, it’s not too early to start doing some entrepreneurial. We have a phrase in digital marketing called credibility before visibility. So even though you’re still maybe in your first year, for the first years that you’re here, it’s not too early to start getting a few clients on the side, doing a little bit of work on the side, alongside your studies. So you can develop that portfolio of experience. But anyway, I don’t want to take away from anything else, so I will introduce you all to Mr. Chris Surridge. I believe he’s got a short presentation planned and then he’ll be happy to take questions at the end. So thank you very much, Chris, over to you my man.
Speaker Chris Surridge
No worries, Matthew. Thank you so much, indeed. Oh, excuse me there. So what I will say is, do you mind if I share my screen? Oh yeah, you’ve given me that access. Okay, let me share my screen and bring up [crosstalk 00:02:04]. There we are. I will politely ask if we can just all, probably mute everyone for the time being, and then we’ll open up again for the Q and A, if that’s okay, towards the end. Is that right, Matt? Yes, okay. So guys look, thank you every [inaudible 00:02:29] for jumping on board with me here. From time to time, as Matt knows my Zoom sometimes kicks out a little bit and just pauses. So if it does, forgive me, I will be back in the room in about five seconds later, it’s just a bandwidth thing, which is ironic for a digital agency, but it is what it is.
So just to give you a little bit of background about me, my name’s Chris Surridge, I am the digital marketing director here over at Whitefish marketing. As you can see on the screen here, you got my web address there and telephone number, so a bit of blatant advertising, because that’s what it’s all about. And today I’m going to be having a quick chat with you about setting up your own agency. For those of you who are thinking about potentially going out on your own and taking that leap of faith and thinking, do you know what I’ve got that entrepreneurial spirit, I don’t really want to work for someone else. I’m going to go ahead and have a look and give it a go myself.
I’m going to try and base this presentation on about half an hour of the presentation, might be less actually, depends on how we get along. And then the rest of the time, I’m probably going to look to open the floor for questions. So if you have any specific questions, do think about them now and what you want to ask. I’ll try and give you some anecdotes, maybe some real life examples of myself, my clients, and other things that have happened, whether it be positive news, pitfalls, things you should look out for. Oh, excuse me. I’ve got my little puppy here, which I just- Hello, all right I’m on the phone, good girl. So a little bit more about me. Forgive me there.
So I set up Whitefish marketing approximately seven slash eight years. I think we’re on our eighth year now. I set up in 2014. I’ve been in digital marketing for, or marketing for quite some time. Then moving into digital marketing specifically. And I worked for some big agencies before the sliding. You know what it’s time now to, to, to go out on my own. I think if you start working for some people, you’ll start realizing that you prefer to do things a different way and you kind of want to make the shots and call the shots yourself. And frankly, that is the entrepreneurial spirit. So I’m going to go through some bits and bobs. I can tell you more about myself at the end. I don’t want to wrap on about myself, but today it’s more about yourselves and hopefully what kind of information I can showcase for you.
So is that all right? Sorry. I heard something then, is everything all right? Okay. So let’s go onto this thing here, starting out. Matthew’s absolutely right in terms of, it’s never too early to have that entrepreneurial spirit. I must admit I had a bit of an entrepreneurial spirit at university. I actually set up a different company back then, doing something completely different. And even before university, I had another company doing promotional marketing when I was 17, 18. So I always wanted to have that entrepreneurial idea of going out on my own.
That being said, I must admit, I did learn a few lessons and that is, that I made a lot of mistakes along the way. And the core reason for that is because I didn’t have the experience in the industry. Things which obviously are tried and tested, you can then utilize that for later on because you know, it’s been tried, tested, secure, it works. But if you are going out on your own for the very first time and you’ve got no experience behind you, you are going to come acropetal with certain things, so you just have to bear that in mind.
However, one thing that Matthew did say, and I can’t remember what the phrase was he just used about creativity versus something, but exactly what he said there in terms of, it’s not too early to start, I’m going to talk about your website in a bit. And one of the things I wanted to tell you is an expression I use, which is progress versus perfection. In other words, progress, you can get up and start doing something. You don’t always have to wait for that perfect moment, or you don’t always have to wait for your website, or your content or whatever it might be, to be absolutely perfect. And I’ll give you a case study later on about something that I know where that such a thing has happened.
So excuse me, let me talk to you about this slide then and where we’re at with it. What I would say is if you are getting a job or if you are already in a job, don’t pull the rip cord just yet. Consider going freelance at the same time as your full-time employment, get some money on the side, get some clients on the side, build up a portfolio, that’s the next thing, definitely. Because when the time comes and you want to go ahead and launch yourself, a portfolio, a case study, a testimonial, a review, those things are worth a thousand words. They’re going to be your weight in gold when the time comes and you set up for yourself. Having recommendations and referrals from other people, or a testimonial on a voice of credibility are worth its weight in gold.
Also at the same time, when you go ahead and start doing things on the side, you can start building up some regular clients with regular income. One of the biggest things that people are going to struggle with when they go on their own, is trying to identify how much money they need to survive, how much money they genuinely can have to survive. Some people have a wish and that’s not necessarily met by the need. Initially you just look at the basic needs. How much do you need to have in terms of income to survive, to pay the bills, to put food on the table, and then you can progress from there. Don’t go ahead and say, I want to have a $60,000, $70,000, $80,000 jobs spread out, that’s not going to happen unless you’re extremely lucky, which I haven’t heard of.
So build up your portfolio, build up some regular clients with regular income, and of course build up your cash reserves. That’s one thing I would definitely say, because if a client pulls out and you’re going to have to rely on some cash reserves, then you need to make sure you’ve got some savings there or something to help with your cash flow, moving forward. Once all those things are ready, and once you think that you’ve got a nice critical mass, doesn’t have to be a huge thing, just a small critical mass, ready for you to go, then you start to transition and go on your own.
And what I’ve tried to do here, put here at the bottom here of every slide is what I call my top tip, get some industry experience first. Now I worked for a major digital marketing agency, which were the best in their industry sector. And I’ll talk about that in a minute. They were the best in their industry sector by a country mile in the UK. And I worked on the flagship accounts, with substantial millions in their budget per year. Now what I learned then in terms of, if I look at, I worked there for about four, four and a half years, something of that nature. If I look at what I was, when I came out of that company, compared to my skillset, my experience, what I had going into that company, they are astronomically at two different ends of the spectrum and scale.
So one thing I will say is even if it’s for a short time, get some industry experience first. Start to learn how to deal with clients, learn about what client expectations are going to be like. Are they easy? Are they hard? Learn about what my old boss used to say is the red face test. When you’re sitting opposite client and they’re very upset with you, how do you deal with that? And I know that sounds a bit shallow for me to say, but learn all that on somebody else’s dime, because at the end of the day, you’re covered by somebody else’s company who will back you and support you and so on and so forth.
When you go out on your own and you hit these hard pitfalls, then it’s all on your head. So here, I’ve got a lovely picture of a guy, or a lovely kid here on stabilizers. So that’s what it is, starting out use stabilizers and just get that balance before you’re ready to progress onto the next bit. Limited company versus sole trader. Now so you’ve pulled the rip code, you bit the bullet, whatever expression you want and you think you’re going to actually go ahead and now make that move, make that transition.
I am always a very, very, very strong advocate of limited companies. The reason for that is because very first and foremost, for any of those who study basic business studies, you have limited liability. If you’re a sole trader, you can potentially get yourself sued and lose your house, or if you have to sign up to certain types of personal loans, these things here are bad. Have a limited company, it’s as simple as that. They’re not too expensive to run. So if you go onto Google and search for this expression here, which I’ve got here, same day company formation, there will be tons of service providers out there. The chances are it’s about 99 pounds, and they probably set it up in less than a week.
[crosstalk 00:11:46].
Hello, oh, okay, we’re gone. So what I’ll say there is yes, have a look at the same day company formation. Also, at the same time, one thing I actually didn’t put down in this presentation, is, have a chat with a bank early, early on, rather than leave it to the last minute. During lockdown, there was a massive, massive problem with banks and I actually set up another company, Matt knows which company. But I set up a completely separate company in a completely different industry, for a personal interest of mine, during lockdown. And the problem was, no banks were actually setting up bank accounts for companies because of admin issues and they are concerned about liabilities during lockdown, of new business startups.
So, one thing I will say is speak to your bank early on because the process will actually take quite a while to set up your business bank account. You really want your business bank accounts to be in place when you first start, because otherwise it starts muddying your accounts, your profits, compared to your personal income, and it gets a little bit messy. Some of the legal requirements though, unfortunately, of having a limited company and these things people are actually aware of. So first and foremost, every year you’re going to have to submit annual accounts to HMRC. But then again, that’s no different if you worked for yourself, worked as a freelancer and you’d have to do a self assessment tax return in January, each year.
Oh, I think my connection’s just a little bit unstable. Forgive me if I disappear. But yes, you’re going to want to have an annual accounts returned to HMRC, every year. You’re also going to have to do a very, very basic confirmation statement to Companies House. What I’d advise, is just farm this out to a cheap accountant. You can speak to accountants who, there are so many now who will just handle your year end tax returns and go from there.
The other thing that is vitally important and a legal requirement is public liabilities insurance and, if even employers liability insurance, because a limited company is a separate legal entity to yourself. And as such, you will need employers liability, because you are an employee. It’s as simple as that. And of course, in the current legalities, you also have to pay pension. So even if it’s just you to start with, you’re going to have to find a pension provider, speak to an accountant, speak to a good accountant who can handle all of this for you. And unfortunately that’s just one cost that you do have to take on the chin in my opinion. You can do it yourself, but I’m going to show you later on why you don’t want to do it. You want to be farming out a lot of admin stuff, that you yourself do not want to be focusing on, because then it frees you up to do what you do best in your skill sector.
And the last thing that I will say, I’ve just separated here, is do consider giving yourself PAYE, as opposed to dividends. Now, dividends are, if you are a shareholder of your company, you might want to spread out the shares with your partner, or your parents. And at the end of the year, you can give yourself dividends. Now, the good thing about giving yourself dividends is that you don’t actually pay national insurance on those things, but of course, that’s going to affect your pension later on down the line.
And you technically, potentially can pay less tax from the company over all by just doing it by the dividend. The problem with that, and I know a couple of people in the industry who have actually experienced this, who only pay themselves dividends, is when they want to come and get a mortgage, there’s actually only certain types of mortgage companies. There are actually specialists, like freelance contractor mortgage providers, who will give you a mortgage based on income from dividends. Whereas with PAYE, you are actually seen as a separate employee of the company, and you are just getting a regular paycheck, just like you would do if you work for ABC limited.
So at the end of the day, I recommend doing yourself PAYE because that’s actually going to help you potentially get a mortgage later on down the line. Now things might have very all changed, but I’m just giving you from my experience. My top tip down here at the bottom, do, do, do, whenever you go off and get your liabilities insurance as stuff, add on professional liability insurance. Now professional liability insurance, people might think, well, that’s only for lawyers or accountants or doctors, because if they do something wrong, it’s going to have a real significant impact on the patient, or on their client. If they’ve screwed something up legally, so on and so forth.
No, it’s also for our profession as well. At the end day, you are providing a professional service for somebody else’s business. And if potentially you mess up on something, they could come back to your company and have a go, and dare I say it, even try to sue you. And so subsequently, just be aware of that and you should, for a very, very small premium take out professional liability insurance. Even if you decide to go down the freelancer route and not the limited company route, you can still take out professional liability insurance, as an individual.
I use a company called policy Bee, excuse me, policy Bee, as in bee as in the insect and they’re very good. I’m sure there’s tons of other insurance providers out there, but they’re very, very good, but you can also help with your pensions as well, so consider them. So you decided now to set up the company, let’s take this to the next step then. What are you exactly going to consider? So first thing is choosing your brand name carefully.
Now everyone always asks me, why did I come up with the name, Whitefish marketing? And I’ve got a silly anecdote about it, but I won’t go into that now. But really what you want to do is you want to choose your brand name carefully. You want to choose somewhere the domain is available. When I say the domain, obviously the URL www.ABClimited.com, or whatever. So you want to make sure the domain is available. You want to make sure that there’s no similarities to other brand names with a similar name to yourself, because people will start searching for you by brand as you grow. Have a look at your competitors then as well, make sure that you are not in the same sector or even other sector.
What I mean by that is let’s say you want to call yourself, Virgin digital media. Now how close is that to Virgin media? And frankly, you’re never going to start out ranking that competitor. So just give it some thought. Do your research, have a quick check. Also, consider the pronunciation and spelling. Whitefish marketing, for me, was always something quite simple. But if I have to say it to people, I say white, the color, fish, the animal. But what I’m getting at is you don’t want something where there’s going to be some sort of ambiguity over the spelling or the pronunciation. You also want to be able to say it quite easily, let it roll off the tongue. Let other people be able to say it quite easily.
Oddly enough, I’ve actually set up my other company, which I’m talking to you about. And that fails that criteria and we’re having significant feedback from friends and families that they don’t know how to pronounce the brand of our new business. So that’s a real cause for concern. How am I meant to send this out to the public, when my own family and friends don’t know how to pronounce it? So, consider that.
Another thing I just want to talk to you about when choosing a brand name carefully, I have a client who chose a brand name, which is extremely similar to a generic product, because that’s their industry. I’m going to make this up because this isn’t the name of the company, but it was something like fire safety products limited, okay? Fire safety products limited, and that was their brand and trading name, fire safety products. Now the fact of the matter is you go ahead and type into Google, fire safety products. You’re not going to come across their company. You’re going to come across every other supplier of fire safety products, who are doing SEO, PPC, marketing for that terminology.
So frankly, your brand is already competing with products, and with products that other people sell. So you’re never going to gain your visibility. The other thing to consider, just while we’re on that, is try not to have generic products or phrases because one day you might think to consider trademarking your company name. And with the trademark regulations, you are not actually able to trademark a terminology, which is generic. I think the one that they use on their example on their website is the term example, quality handbags limited. You can’t trademark the term quality handbag’s limited because somebody’s selling handbags on an eCommerce or might want to use the expression, we sell quality handbags. So subsequently, they won’t allow that trademark.
All right, moving on because I’m behind time here. Do, create a website. I said to you earlier on, progress not perfection. You don’t have to have the best all singing website to launch, because otherwise you could be sitting there forever. I had one client who actually waited and said, no, I’m not too sure. I’m not too sure. I’m not too sure. Now they stared out at exactly the same time as me, two years later, I had progressed in my turnover, had tripled or something along those lines. And she still hadn’t launched her product. She was still dealing with the content, dealing with the product, better of mind, it was as service, not a tangible product. And it took her two years before she actually launched her website. And then she failed within the first year, because she’d actually run out of all her money from living off her savings for two years.
So consider progress, not perfection. Also don’t rely on Facebook or other types of social media, as your visual input to the world. Do, consider creating yourself a website, even if it’s a basic one to begin with. If you rely on things like Facebook, you’ve seen what’s happened recently with the whole Facebook crash, as it were. So that means that your website will also go down. That’s not to say your servers won’t go down on your website. But what I’m saying to you is, you are reliant on some third party. The other thing about that as well is Facebook, in my opinion, may very well. This is like a premium model. They’re offering everything to you for free at the moment, but things are starting to creep in. The Facebook algorithm is now so like to lean towards paid services as opposed to organic.
And in my gut instinct, as a question mark, I’m wondering as to whether not Facebook are actually going to start charging business owners to have a business profile, in the future. So, just do consider that. Let’s move on, identify what your core market service will be. What I mean by that is, don’t become a jack of all trades. Because your customers will see for it, when they start questioning you about certain things, the chance that unless you are an expert in all of those fields, don’t become a jack of all trades. Specialize in the sector that you are good in, or rather the skill sector that you are good in, and become an expert in that given area.
Let’s have a look at your company ethos and core values, not really a biggie, but some people will ask you about your core values. And it’s a good selling point when you put it on your website, some people will ask about it and just also, so that your integrity as well. How much are you going to stand by your company values, when dealing with a client? Next one, thought about niching. So yes, and this goes down to my top tip down here at the bottom, do niche in a sector that you’re passionate about. If you niche, I talked to you about earlier on about the agency that I worked in for ages, they niche within the automotive sector and they were the UK’s largest automotive digital agency buyer by a country mile. And they niche in that sector and they didn’t initially start off just taking on anything that they could, but then as they grew, they niche into a sector, they got rid of all the other erroneous kind of clients. And they became the leading authority in that sector, because they niched.
So do consider about niching in a particular sector and make sure you’re passionate about it because otherwise you’re going to lose a lot of momentum, and a lot of energy, and a lot of enthusiasm about it. Consider your USP. What’s going to make you… Sorry, USP, unique selling point. So what is your USP? What’s going to make you stand out from your competitors? Is it your price? Is it your quality? Is it your speed? Is it your flexibility? Is it your reliability? Is it your niche? So on and so forth, just consider those things. How much are you going to charge?
Now, regionally, initially you’re going to have to potentially charge less than the competition because you starting out and you need to gain some traction. You need to consider how competitive you are. Then let’s have a look at your competitors as well. If you are going to go ahead and niche in a particular sector, are you going up against major, major, major players who will just kill you instantly? Like I said, about automotive, would it be wise for you to go into the automotive sector and challenge some of the other major giants who are already in that sector and who have easily the lion share of the market? So look at national competitors in your niche, and also locally as well.
So are there any other major agencies in your local area, which might drown out your voice when you talk, doing some local marketing? And lastly, to help you start up and you always need to find some money. You got the old, I can’t remember, it’s four or five F’s. What is it? It’s fool, friends, families, and fuck wits, excuse my language, but that is what it is. So yes, you can borrow money those ways or go ahead and have a look at some government grants, for startups. There are a lot of grants and if you click on this link, and I’m sure, it can be shared later on.
The government website, you can go on there, you can search by your region and then it’ll show you, I believe all, the active government grants in your region whether it be Southeast, or London, and so on and so forth. Startup loans is slightly different. Obviously from a grant, you have to go ahead and pay it back and with an interest, but obviously startup business loans often have a lower interest rate. What I will say, however, it is be wary of offering personal guarantees. Then, in that negates the whole purpose of having a limited liability company.
We are a little bit behind on time. There’s only a couple more slides here and then we’ll go ahead through the Q and A. What I will say about, this moves on to the next thing. So once you’re up and running, we got to have a look at your sales. Now I don’t know about you, I was never a natural salesman. In fact, I took on a sales job and I lasted three months and I was fired from it, because I was rubbish at sales. However, that was something I was not passionate about. Selling a product, I wasn’t passionate about.
If it’s your own company, it’s your own baby. You are actually going to be very passionate about it, going to be very protective about it. And you are going to want to do your absolute best to make this work. So let’s have a look at sales. Sales are going to fall to yourself to begin with, until such time as you grow and you can afford to get hold of a really nice qualified salesman and give them commission and so on, and so forth. It’s going to fall on your own shoulders. So first thing I’d say, definitely create some form of PDF sales brochure. You can go ahead and create it, like I’m doing with this presentation. Now this is a very, very bland presentation. Hopefully I’ve gone over the substance as opposed to style.
But go ahead and create yourself a sales brochure. Outline all your prices and your costs, because if you don’t want to show that to other competitors on your website, which is completely understandable, then keep that so that when you’re speaking to a client, you can message them privately and send them your PDF sales brochure, with all the facts and figures on it. The next thing, create a sales proposal template. Do not, do not reinvent the wheel every single time. I used to do that. I used to create a purpose, spoke proposal for every single client that I met and I did it all from scratch. Can you imagine how time consuming and time wasteful that was?
In the end, I started to realize, wait a minute, actually I know what I’m selling and I know what they want to go ahead and see. So let’s go ahead and start creating a template. Then I can just take out the client’s name and put in the actual services and away you go. Next thing, research and practice a routine sales pitch, to help you win that contract. Now, whenever I’m speaking with a client, I like to deliver them down a small journey, to actually identify. Asking a whole lot of questions, identify what their problems are. And then hopefully look to proceed how we can solve that. There are lots of other kind of sales techniques you might have heard of something called AIDA, A-I-D-A. That stands for attention, interest, desire, action.
So grab their attention, tweak their interest, then nurture their desire, and then finally hit them with the action with, let’s do the deal now. That’s probably more actually I learned that years, donkeys, donkeys, donkey years go, and that’s probably more for like retail selling. However, if you were to look at it from an agency point of view, and this is one that I learned, which was called spin. And spin stands for situation, problem, impact, and need. So when you are speaking to a client, you talk about their situation. What is their current situation? How’s it? And let’s learn about your situation that you’re currently in. What have you done so far? Now, let’s look at the problem.
So identify the hurdles that they’re currently facing, given their situation. Is it that they’re not getting enough exposure? Is it that they’re PBC performance is underperforming? Is it that their social isn’t getting enough reach? Then let’s talk about the impact. How, and you talk about the negative impact. What kind of negative impact is that having on their business? So by now you’ve sold them the perspective. It’s almost like fear mongering that they’ve kind of dawned and realized that they’re actually in a bit of trouble. And then you to talk about the need, or the solution. You are going to provide them with what they need to overcome those problems. So spin, okay.
Practice your elevator picture as well. So many people I speak to ,and I ask them, can you just tell me what you do, actually, what is your company? And they babble on for absolutely ages, just like I’m doing now. But they babble on for absolute ages. Now an elevator pitch, is the American thing, is talking about when they talk obviously an elevator, as opposed to a lift. In America, you need to be able to succinctly tell the person standing next to an elevator, what you do for a living or what your company does within the time it takes to go from one floor, to the next floor. That’s why it’s called the elevator pitch.
Just think about two sentences, a very succinct expression about what your business is, and how you help people, and why they should consider you. Sales process, consider using a CRM system, like a customer relationship management system. As you start to grow, and as you start to have notes, you’re going to have a buildup of emails. I think I’ve got over 1,000, 1,100, when I looked at it yesterday, unread actionable emails in my inbox and that’s before I even look at the CRM.
So when you’re doing the sales, consider having a proper CRM system. HubSpot, the link that I’ve given you here, is absolutely free. It’s a brilliant system. I think it even has a sales pipeline as well, where you can progress the person along. Have a look at their videos. It’s really good, it’s free to use and definitely I think, go ahead and do it. Next thing, when you’re dealing with your clients, constantly communicate with your clients. There’s nothing worse than winning a pitch, winning the client, signing the proposal, going about your business and you don’t speak to them.
They hate that and they’ll pull out at their earliest opportunity. So consider regular communication, even if it’s just dipping the toe in the water every now and then, speaking with your clients. The next thing I want to say is retaining a client is cheaper than acquisition. What I mean by that is if you’ve already got a client on your books, consider upselling to them, make sure they go ahead and sign on for another month. There’s the retainer model, but nurture that existing client, because they’ve already bought into your services.
So consider about that rather than keep trying to fetch the next client. I had one of my clients I spoke with and I said to him, what’s your retention rate like, or your acquisition rate? And he said, every month, our business probably comprises of… About 80% of revenue comes from new business every month. And I said, new business every month is 80%, so what do you do of your old business? And then he goes, honestly, they just fall by the wayside. And I said, is it cyclical? Do you need them every month? Can they buy it? It’s not like becoming a learning instructor where once they pass a test, they’re not going to come back. And he said, no, they need their CPDs, or something like that, every year. But he never considered the retention procedure.
So do have a think about that. Now my top tip here at the bottom is, take on all jobs initially. Yes, you are going to need to grab as much money as you can do in the early days. Then later on, you can be selective about it. Not all clients are equal, not all clients are actually going to be as profitable as some. Some will drain your time. Some will drain your profitability and your admin. So do consider that, when you progress on to bigger and brighter things.
I think we’re on to, two last slides. When you look at your admin, so what you want to try and do is streamline a lot of your admin. Definitely, definitely, definitely. Like I said to you at the very start outsource the basic stuff, which takes up your time. You are a digital marketer. You have a skill sector whether it be PPC, SEO, social media, email marketing, conversion rate optimization, any of those kind of things, web development, whatever it might be.
That’s your specialty. That’s where your strength flies in. It’s not in accounting, it’s not in data entry. It might not even be in proposal write ups, or email send outs, or sales literature creation and stuff like that. Farm it out. Do some research, have a look on things like Upwork. I don’t actually know what the new name of it is. It might be, I think it’s Upwork or freelancer. Go ahead and find a virtual assistant, a VA as they’re now called. Definitely have a look at accounts, farm out a lot of the stuff as cheaply as you can, but make sure it comes back well. Create a template of activities you can cookie cutter for each client. To begin with, I actually tailored a service for every single client, every single time, which meant a lot of time, a lot of research and so on and so forth.
After a while, I started to realize that 80% of the services were universal and actually only 20% had to be tailored. So what I did was I actually started to template a load of the activities. So I didn’t have to think about what I’m going to be delivering for each client. And that then moves on to mixing here and SOP, standard operating procedure. So consider creating standard operating procedure for your own sake of mind so you don’t have to think about things when you’re doing stuff, but also for any kind of future employees or temporary employees, or even your admin, that you’re going to farm out. Create a standard operating procedure and how you’re going to go ahead and operate things. Put it into an Excel template. These things do not have to be la de da fancy. It’s very, very basic stuff.
The other thing as well is think about your KPI reporting for your end products. This is for the clients. Do have a look at your KPI reporting, because if they’re going to be paying you money for something, they want to know what success looks like, and you’re going to have to manage their expectations. And you’re also going to have to report on that at the end of the day. So things like a website, is tangible. They’re going to actually see it. They can operate it, they can interact with it. They’re either going to be happy with it, or they’re going to ask you to tweak it, but that is something tangible and that’s your end product, really.
If it’s SEO or PPC, then obviously KPI reports are already going to deal with results. How many leads or where your organic positions are, and the amount of traffic and so on, and so forth. If it’s social, it might be something about how much engagement, or reach that you’ve acquired. Whatever it is, consider your KPI reporting, have a look at some of the KPI reporting tools, which are out there. I think we use company called Megalytic. But there’s so many out there, which will help integrate things with Facebook, Google analytics, and so on, and so forth. So as you can provide a template, KPI report every month for your clients.
So this is going to move on to the next part of the next slide. What I will say top tip is you’re going to get bogged down with working for a lot of clients. There’s no doubt about it, as things progress, but dedicate a percentage of your working week to your own business. Otherwise, you won’t grow or you won’t be able to find the time to go ahead and create these templates, or standard operating procedures. And unfortunately, those are things which will help scale your business in the future.
This is the, dare I say it, is this the last slide? Yes, it is, my goodness me. So quickly then, your own marketing, have a budget, stick with it. Even if it’s a small budget to begin with, don’t go over the top. Then also, I should actually jump this down to the third point here, think about which activities of your own marketing is going to yield the best ROI. I say to clients, the SEO, especially for a brand new company, you’re looking at six months to a year to really gain some proper traction, trust, build up the momentum with Google and so on and so forth. If you need immediate leads, there may be considered some sort of PPC option whether it be Google PPC, whether it be Facebook PPC, LinkedIn even PPC, although that’s very expensive. Things of that nature. So consider what activities will yield the best ROI and maybe in the quickest time for you as well.
This then, also ties in with drawing up your own marketing plan. So think about the different avenues that you can do, think about your objectives, think about your marketing message. Is it seasonal as well? I work with a lot of accountants. That’s the niche sector that I’m in. Don’t think about getting into it. That’s my sector, get out of it. I’m only joking. So for example, in coming up around this time of year, November, December, and especially January, is going to be a massive time for what’s known as self-assessment tax returns, SATR’s. So I know that we’ve got to do a heavy push, for that type of campaign because it’s very, very seasonal at this time of year. So consider the seasonalities of your industries and how to plan around that. Maybe push more of your budget towards your peak season and save some money during those seasons, which might be the summer months, when people are away on a holiday, things of this nature.
Also, do consider to practice what you preach. Now, I unfortunately do not practice what I preach because I am currently stuck dealing with, or not stuck, that’s the wrong word to use. I am lovely. I have lovely, lovely clients and I’m working very, very hard for them. And I have my other teams dealing with stuff like our own marketing, but unfortunately we don’t always practice what we preach because we get tied down. And so this is why these are words to myself as well. Do, go ahead and remember to put some time into your own business each week, that is very, very, very vital important.
And I’ll be absolutely honest with you, I go on entrepreneurial meetings all the time. I actually went on one last month and that was the key message that they gave to you, was that you need to put more of your own time, Chris, into your own company because you’re working too hard on all your clients. So it’s not, even for me, I’ve been in the industry 14 years, I’m still learning. I’m still constantly learning and you have to, it’s as simple as that. Lastly, consider some networking groups. There are things like, obviously you can consider your local chamber of commerce, maybe speak to some local networking groups, although nowadays everything’s done virtually. So these are free things which you can can do and really it’s just going to take up your time, whether it be in the morning or the evening. And the last top tip here, before I open up the floor for Q and A’s is very much about becoming your authority.
I mentioned there about niching in your sector. You want to become the authority, in your subject matter, for your chosen industry. That’s the ultimate goal. And then what happens is you have a friend of yours from university who picks up the phone and calls you and goes, hello Chris, I hear that you run an award-winning digital marketing agency. Can you please come and speak at our university for a seminar? Because I think you’re the best person in the world, and that’s what happens, that’s how you become that authority. I see you. And that’s how you become, dare I say it, the authority in that sector. All right, well look, that’s it, that’s enough of me rambling. There’s one last little thing here. Please be gentle with me, okay? When you ask these questions, that’s all I ask. I will do my absolute best. We’ve got about 20 minutes, 15 minutes. I’m going to open up the floor, or Matt will open up the floor and I will do my best to answer them. Thank you so much.
Speaker Matthew Danes
Thank you so much for that, Chris. Very insightful, like the tips at the bottom and especially like the idea of farming out what I’m not good at. I’ve always been a fan of that. We’ve had a lot of questions asked throughout the entirety of the challenge I quite like. So, I’m going to take on a couple of the major themes and one of the major themes, which is kind of the third to last question there actually is. How do you initially find your clients?
Speaker Chris Surridge
Oh, that is a very good question. So it’s exactly the same as what I probably say to my own clients, okay? There are two ways you can do things. You can either outreach to them, and that’s the equivalent of cold calling in the old fashioned days. But unfortunately, that’s got a low hit rate. You can buy an email database from a GDPR compliant database warehouse, get yourself an email system and start bombarding people with emails. But the pickup rate is very, very low and frankly, that’s all cold calling. What I prefer is looking at warm inquiries, people chasing you. So if people chase you, and they pick up the phone and they call you and then go, hi Joe blogs, I’d like to learn bit more about your agency, I’ve had look at your website.
That’s the preferred option because that means it’s a warm lead. It’s easier to convert into a sale, and frankly you are not chasing them. Dare I say, you are a little bit more in the seat of control there. So what I would probably look to do is, easiest way is, search engine marketing, whether it be Google PPC or SAO. Because I say every single client, if you’re going to search for a service, a product, a holiday, 99% time, you’re going to go jump on Google and search for that product first. Social searches are becoming more prevalent, yes. But let’s be honest with you, Google has the industry share. So people will go into Google and they will search for a digital market agency near them. And if you can rank in your positions, like locally, consider local SEO, consider doing some very, very cheap local PPC. People see your advert, come to you, hopefully convert on your website and then you have a warm lead coming to you, rather than you chasing them, irritating and annoying them. Cool.
Speaker Matthew Danes
Excellent. So this is the second follow up question, which once again has just come through again, but it’s been through the chat, so now you’ve got them. How are you keeping them?
Speaker Chris Surridge
OK. So first and foremost, onboarding process. Consider, when I talk about a standard operating procedure, think about an onboarding process, about how you’re going to nurture that client once they’re on. You don’t just sign a contract and thanks bye bye. You want to nurture them. I think, and do forgive me if I’m getting things wrong, but I think British airways are very, very good in what doing what they call a value chain analysis. And that is where they look at every single touch point that a customer has with their business, and they try to improve on those touch points and be better than the competitors. So if you can imagine the first class service, the experience that they have at the check-in desk, the experience they have in the first class waiting lounge, then the experience that they have on the plane journey itself. And also afterwards with communications before and after, think about the value chain.
So exactly the same principle here. Think about the value chain, how you’re going to nurture that client coming on board. And I also talk to you as well about great communication, once they’re on board. There is nothing worse than not having regular communication with your clients Because trust me, they get pissed off with of you when haven’t heard from you, that you’re taking their money and I haven’t bloody heard from you. What the hell’s going on? I can’t see any reports. I can’t see any action, blah, blah, blah, yeah.
Speaker Matthew Danes
Excellent, another kind of theme that’s coming through. So it’s changing this time, and I like the way this person phrased it was knowing what you know now, what would you have done differently?
Speaker Chris Surridge
Oh, that is a very good. I will definitely say that I’ve talked about things like creating the templates for the sales brochures, the sales proposals, creating your own standard operating procedure and almost bullet pointing out a whole list of actions that you know you’re going to do on a monthly basis for a client’s social campaign, or for a client’s SEO campaign. So I was spending a lot of time tailoring a program for each client, even the really small, cheap clients. I was spending a lot of time, reinventing the wheel every single time and that sapped a lot of energy and a lot of time. And you could reinvest that time, into other areas of your market. Also, one other thing that Matt said right at the very, very start.
When he said this, if you’re going to be an entrepreneur and someone once said this to me as well, something very, very similar. This is a key phrase. I really want you to take this away. You do not make money off your own back. The only way you’ll become rich, is by other people’s backs, in other words, charging for their time. I have someone, and a family member of mine, who talk about the fact that they want to earn themselves a six figure salary, and so on, and so forth. Everyone has that wish and they go, that’s absolutely fine, but they work for someone, and they will always work for someone.
And I say to them, let me ask you this. How many billable hours in the week can you earn from average?, 40 billable hours. All right, well, I’ve got a team of 10. So, that means I have 400 billable hours per week and the reason why it’s because I’m leveraging on nine other employees here. So I don’t have nine other employees, but you get the gist. What I’m getting at is, you leverage other people’s efforts works. Obviously you reward them, naturally. But that’s how you grow and you scale and that’s one thing that I would say is, try to farm out a lot of the stuff which is going to drain your time and you’re very bored mate. You’re very disinterested in your own company, farm all of that out. That’s one thing I really, really wish I could go back and redo.
Speaker Matthew Danes
Excellent, and there was another great question that came up was on about, and it’s less market, more entrepreneurial, and they phrase it. Are there any healthy habits to develop your entrepreneurial spirit, skill set?
Speaker Chris Surridge
Yeah, so as you can see, I have a lifetime supply to Redbull, much to my wife’s dismay, because she think’s I’m going to have a heart attack any second. So yes, the healthy life work balance really is very, very important. As Matthew knows, I’m actually quite a bit of a large lad and frankly that’s because I sit in this chair all day, just working away. When I need to get up, I need to walk around, I might need to do standing up and working at the desk as you have these kind of new desks. Do consider putting your health first. There’s absolutely no point in you earning all this money if you’re dead.
So do think about your work health, work life balance, especially the impact that’s going to have on your relationships. I used to work on Saturdays and then some days on Sundays, much to my wife’s dismay, and now I’ve got young children. That’s completely a deal breaker. So really, really, really do consider hammering it hard for those 40 or 50 hours during the week. But also, definitely remember have some downtime, pamper yourself, whether it be, I don’t know. For me, I know it sounds silly, but I’m actually going off to have a beautiful shave, a complete, clean, wet shave this week. And that is my pampering for this month, to kind of help myself relax. So yeah, that’s what I would suggest.
Speaker Matthew Danes
Excellent one, which is actually a question I’ve always had as well, so I’m glad someone else asked it. How do you set your prices? Do you simply look at what your customers do, your competitors do, and just go that?
Speaker Chris Surridge
Yeah, we haven’t got enough time to go into that today. I actually went, do you remember I said to you, I myself, go on a lot of entrepreneurial seminars, myself because it’s always a learning curve. And one of the things I went on was, I actually found it on Facebook. It was a Facebook video tutorial system somebody was selling and I thought, oh, this has peaked my interest. I’ll have a look. And it was all about setting your prices, how you distinguish setting your prices, and so on and so forth.
Now please do forgive me, right now I could not recall how I got about it, but I remember sitting there for about two hours doing this program and a few light bulb moments went off and I thought, do you know what, you don’t have to take everything on board. Just like I’m saying to you now here, you don’t have to take everything I’m saying to you as gospel truth. You have to take the things which are going to resonate and work for you and adapt them to your model, and your way of thinking, and your method of work. So what I’d probably do is suggest having a look at other kind of entrepreneurial discussions, and groups, and forums.
There’s tons, and tons, and tons of free forums on Facebook about business groups, support groups. And also on LinkedIn, have a chat with other people there. And forgive me, we probably don’t have enough time to go into it today. But yes, competitor is definitely one thing, your time and your value is another thing. And also look at the profit and loss. So if you charge something for a hundred pounds and you are farming out to a virtual assistant, at say 30 pounds, and then you also need to spend, say 20 pounds for marketing acquisition on that client in the first place, 10 pounds for actual admin overheads, software costs of running a business. So your costs are already 50 pounds. I’m making it up, but do you see what I’m saying?
So straight away, you then have to realize that you’ve got to also add your salary on top of that and then some sort of retaining profit for the company, that you can reinvest for growth. But that’s kind of a good way to work backwards and see how your pricing model should be. And then you have to justify that pricing model, if you are more expensive than a competitor, justify it, because you will be asked. Price is one of the main considerations that people will take up when dealing with an agency.
Speaker Matthew Danes
I think so, yes. We’ve had a few questions about web design and, are there any good…What’s a good platform, or website?
Speaker Chris Surridge
Yeah easy, WordPress. Don’t bother with works. Don’t bother with Squarespace. Forgive me, I shouldn’t really be saying these things. One on one, any of the kind of free stuff that you kind get, or the free models and that kind, rubbish. Go to WordPress, and dare I say it, if you are looking for a website, come to me because we have a lovely business startup package for new customers. And I’m being serious, actually, we’ll help you out and we’ll help you deliver something and spread the cost cheaply, but I’m being very serious. Find yourself a WordPress developer. The reason for that is many, many, many, many, many folds. I used to work for a big agency that had proprietary based software. The problem with proprietary based software is that you are stuck to them. You can’t move away. Then, if they want to increase their prices, you are screwed. So point number one.
Point number two, as well is, if big changes happen like with Google, happened just recently, the call web vitals updates. So many other big companies, who have proprietary based software, can’t actually adapt their website to meet the new requirements, and it’s like moving an oil tanker. So by the time that they’ve actually got around to fixing their software for your benefit, all your competitors have moved on. Long story short, just trust me, I could write a couple thousand word blog article on this thing, go with WordPress. Simple as that.
Speaker Matthew Danes
Excellent. We had a good question as well, actually because, and maybe I’m asking the wrong person. They’re on about, is this still a market for… Do you have to be a digital marketer? Or is there still a need for more traditional marketing, posters, events? I mean, we both know the events’ industry very well. Is digital marketing one of the way forwards? Is their still a market for the traditional marketers?
Speaker Chris Surridge
Yeah. So I’m going to give you a statistic, which I remember very, very well when I was dealing with the automotive sector, trying to sell cars. For example, as in my clients for automotive dealers, so selling cars, or how to promote sales of cars on their behalf. The average Joe blog’s customer in the street will have about increase from 18, I think to 24, if you could believe it, touch points before making a decision on when to purchase a car.
Now, when I say a touch point, they would be things which are both online and offline. So they might see an advert in the newspaper. They might hear radio ad, they might see a bus stop sign, but then also, then they’re going to go online and have a look at the company online. They’re going to have a look at the images on Autotrader, for example, or the digital thing. Then they’re going to go ahead and look at reviews of the dealership online, because they can’t do in the paper, and so on and so forth. They might have a look at their social and blah, blah, blah, blah, and YouTube videos for reviews of that particular car and the product.
So there’s actually a good argument, that they do work both hand in hand. It’s not one or the other. I think, if I’m brutally honest with you, the only thing in my personal, personal belief, which is probably dying out, are things like print magazines, and advertising within print magazines. When was the last time brutally honest, when was the last time, apart from being in London, you sitting on, picking up the Metro magazine on the tube. When was the last time you bought yourself an actual hard print magazine, or a newspaper and read it cover to cover, and took an interest? Do you see what I mean? Most things are digital, on your phone, on your laptop, et cetera, tablet, and so on and so forth.
Speaker Matthew Danes
Excellent. A question that’s come in just from Illiaba, has been repeated earlier as well, he says, how do you know if entrepreneurial is for you? And a few people have asked this, how do they know if they are an entrepreneur? As we said, I identified it from you back 20 years ago, in university and stuff like that. And you’ve already known it from before then as well. How do you know if you are an entrepreneur?
[crosstalk 00:55:47]
Speaker Chris Surridge
I know we’re short on time, but Matt, I’ve got to share this with you. My dissertation at university, because we’re on the same course together. My dissertation was actually, and they said to me, you have to tailor it to our subject matter. So I said, all right, what is the entrepreneurial spirit in events management leaders? Are they born with it or are they nurtured? So that was actually my dissertation title. Which was about whether an entrepreneurial spirit is nature versus nurture. And what I’d probably say about that is if you genuinely get up in the morning and you like business, you like the idea of turning a profit. Or even if you were working for a charity, you like the idea of progression of some sort of thing. It’s the idea of almost challenging oneself though. I love to challenge myself.
I love chomping on a new project and so on and so forth. So you have that ego. You don’t always get those opportunities if you work for somebody else, you’re not necessarily given the big projects. Rather, I don’t believe that. Unfortunately, although working for someone else is actually meant to be a symbiotic approach. I generally don’t believe that actually is true. Unfortunately, I think that the employers will dictate the employees what to do. And that unfortunately means that you are boxed, and pigeonholed, in terms of what you’re doing, what your creativity and flare is, and so on and so forth. So if you wake up in the morning and you have this urge to do something, but you’re reigned in and you can’t do it because your employers don’t want to, that’s the kind of entrepreneurial spirit I would say that exists within you.
Speaker Matthew Danes
Excellent, thanks for that and that very nice, passionate ending there as well. I think so. You said we can share your slides, that’s perfect. Are people okay to hit you up on LinkedIn as well, create that network?
Speaker Chris Surridge
Absolutely. I’m absolutely more than happy, I’ll tell you what I will do, one other thing, Matt. Should I dare do this? Do you want to send out my… Actually, no, just hook me up on LinkedIn, in all seriousness and message me through LinkedIn. I was about to say, give out my email address, but I just said to you, I’ve got 1100 unread emails. So there’s the chance that it won’t be read, hook me up on LinkedIn. You’ll see my ugly mug, and my company, on LinkedIn. Message me, contact me, ask me any questions at all. I’ll be happy to help out. If you want to have some tips, if you want to know what software is best to use, if you want to know where can I find a good VA, where can I find good freelancer? Just give me a chat. I’ll be more than happy to, dare I say, give you all the notes that I’ve gathered over the last 14 years.
Speaker Matthew Danes
Excellent. Thank you so much for your time today, Chris. I think we got to finish that cause we [crosstalk 00:58:39] and as I said, so we will share the slides out with people we will. And Chris is happy for you to, to find, and hook up with you and on LinkedIn. Thank you so much to everyone that asked questions. I hope I got the main themes, through to the questions. We had over 60 questions, so I just try to go the themes, but-
If you want to ask any more questions, honestly, just send them across to me on LinkedIn, and I’ll answer each one of you individually. I happily do that for you.
Excellent. Thank you so much for your time and Chris and I think everyone’s about to go.
Great stuff.
